Monday, June 25, 2012

Ombudsman
George Brouwer and the 64-word email

Two reports by rival anti-corruption bodies
tabled in state parliament on the same day (unusually, this time only one – the
OPI one, of course – was first leaked to News Ltd*), and a sweeping re-shuffle
of senior police ranks as the two reports were at the printers. Just another ordinary 24 hours in Snowtown-on-the-Yarra,
really.

The latest report by Ombudsman GeorgeBrouwer (PDF) centres on whether ex-2IC Victorian cop Sir Ken Jones leaked to an Age
reporter a 64-word email from Department of Justice Secretary Penny Armytage,
personally approvingthein-prison co-location of Carl Williams
with Matthew Johnson, the man who was later to murder Williams. Technically, George Brouwer would say the
“Who leaked?” matter was not his office’s but the OPI’s (see para 144), but in fact,
neither the (still-unknown) leaker’s identity nor the leaked email are that
important in the bigger picture.

Since April 2012, this email has been in
the public domain (PDF), although a Google search shows that it has not been
quoted in a single analysis (c.f. PDF republishing-bots). For posterity, here it is as it appears in
Appendix 3 of "The death of Mr Carl Williams at HM Barwon Prison – investigation into Corrections Victoria" April 2012(PDF)- note that this email is
in reply to a longer email from Rod Wise to Penny Armytage sent about 45
minutes earlier on 6 Jan 2009 (at 4:45pm, full text is also in Appendix 3);
note also that an address in the “cc” field in both emails has been redacted:

From: Penny
Armytage

To: Rod Wise

Cc: REDACTED

Sent: 6 Jan
2009, 5:27pm

Rod,

I feel
reasonably comfortable with your proposal and note the fact that you have
consulted the Police and they have no concerns about it. Balancing all considerations it appears
appropriate to accede to Carl Williams [sic] request on the basis that we will
monitor the situation and review it as soon as any new factors emerge,
especially with respect to further meetings with Vic Pol.

Penny

Even after careful reading and
consideration, it is hard to understand why the highest-level recriminations have
resulted from this email being leaked, as there is plenty of posterior-covering
by Armytage in the email, leaving aside the issue of whether the “new factors” (of
which there were plenty) that emerged in the 470-odd days between the email and
Williams’ murder were indeed adequately “monitor[ed]” and “review[ed]” by Armytage’s
“we” (which could just mean Penny Armytage and Rod Wise personally, or
alternatively various permutations of the Department of Justice generally and
its Corrections Victoria subsidiary specifically).

True to his previous form, though, the 70-year old Ombudsman George Brouwer does not so much forensically de-construct the
documentary trail, as skip haphazardly through a documentary forest, while
leaving “Easter eggs” – whether accidentally or deliberately, it is hard to
tell – for subsequent careful foragers of his reports. The latter (although regular readers of this
blog will hardly need reminding) excludes the mainstream media – hence all MSM
media coverage of the latest George Brouwer report has focused on the fact that
it clears Sir Ken Jones of personally leaking the above email to an Age
reporter. Yes, the report does indeed
reach this conclusion, but there’s much more to the story.

If the OPI ever does publicly report on who
did then leak the above email to the Age (para 144), I suspect a big clue here
would be in knowing the identity of the redacted “cc” recipient of the
email. Brouwer doesn’t comment in any
way on this redaction, in either his latest or the April 2012 report. My best guess on
this recipient’s identity is that s/he is/was (i) a senior police figure,
either from the plenary leadership ranks (at that time Christine Nixon was
Chief Commissioner), or a Driver Taskforce (i.e. re the murder of the Hodsons,
an anti-corruption witness and his wife) boss specifically, or (ii) a
Corrections Victoria middle-manager, possibly the then General Manager of
Barwon Prison, David Prideaux. If it was
a senior police figure, it can’t have been Sir Ken Jones, who only started
with Victoria Police in May 2009.
However, according to Detective Superintendent Douglas Fryer, Jones did later acquire a copy of this email (para 55).

So what’s the real story behind that latest
Ombudsman’s report?

Conveniently, Simon Overland himself cuts
to the chase in para 118:

“My discussions
with the Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Ms Silver and
Deputy Premier Ryan [at around 9:30am] on Friday 6 May 2011, were concerned
with the general proposition of sending Mr Jones on leave ahead of his
resignation taking effect. … My
intention remained to require Mr Jones to take leave over the next couple of weeks, until
I was briefed [at about 10am] about
the Nick McKenzie article for The Age concerning the murder of Carl
Williams and the roles of the Department of Justice and Corrections Victoria in
his management … [emphasis added]

Overland’s context here is that his
briefing – about an article that was to appear in the Age the next day 7 May,
and which all derived from a meeting early the previous day, 5 May, between Agejourno Nick McKenzie and Detective
Superintendent Douglas Fryer, Senior Investigating Officer for the Driver
Taskforce – was a proverbial last straw.

If so, it seems a highly contrived last
straw. It seems incredible to me that Overland
was not briefed for a full day about the Fryer-McKenzie meeting when a number of
senior police (three of whom, including Jones, are named in the report) had been
briefed the previous day, and then Overland was briefed only by the second-hand say-so of Nicole
McKechnie, then Director of Media and Communications at Victoria Police (who,
to her credit, did promptly brief Overland soon after she herself was briefed
by Fryer at around 9:30am on Friday 6 May 2011 (i.e. the very time Overland on
the phone with Peter Ryan, getting the Police Minister’s two-weeks-or-so-time
permission from to send Jones on “gardening leave”)).

You might think, if you hadn’t combed through
the latest report, that there was a second-last straw for Overland here: that
Overland was miffed that Jones, who Fryer had briefed shortly after his meeting
with Age journo McKenzie on 5 May 2011 (para57), hadn’t promptly filled his boss in on this, so instead
leaving for Overland to learn from his Media and Communications Director the
next day. However, rather complicating
such an explanation is that the two other (named) senior police who had also been briefed the previous day, albeit later than Jones, were Assistant Commissioners Graham Ashton (briefed at about 11am) and Jeff
Pope (briefed at about noon) both of whom (AFAICT), were exemplary loyalists to Overland.

More complicating still – and here are two
of the report’s true nuggets – are the combined revelations of para’s 59 and
64. Firstly, that Fryer noted “Mr Ashton was not familiar with
the issues surrounding the Driver Taskforce”, despite Ashton having been on the
Petra Steering Committee (along with Overland
and Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius: para 55), before that investigation
was subsumed by Driver upon Williams’ murder.
It sounds like Fryer, fresh from his meeting with the Age journo, might as well have told a brick-wall as Ashton,
then. However, not be deterred, at noon that
same day Fryer briefed another Assistant Commissioner, Jeff Pope. While Fryer’s recollection of this briefing
is not elaborated in the report, there is the not-so-little detail that the
same Jeff Pope was present subsequently at the 10:30am executive meeting on 6
May 2011 – the crucial, final step in
dispatching Jones immediately.

The Ombudsman’s report makes no comment on
this coincidence, and it seems that neither Ashton nor Pope were interviewed in
the course of its preparation. It would
be interesting to know what Pope may have said (or not) at that meeting, if
Overland piped up, as appears plausible under his own version of events, that it
was outrageous that he was seemingly the last person in Victoria Police to have
been briefed on the 5 May meeting between Fryer and Age journo McKenzie.

So there appears to be no plausible actual last straw,
under Overland’s
own version of events. I have previously speculated that the likely reason for Overland’s dispatching Jones immediately on 6 May
2011 was that it was done at the actual or implied request of Department of
Justice Secretary (then and now), Penny Armytage. Perhaps not surprisingly, given that the
Department of Justice controls the Ombudsman’s purse strings (at the very
least), its recent report leaves the angle of inquiry well alone.

I’ll finish by emphasising how little the 7
May Age article was actually critical of police, as opposed to the Department
of Justice and Corrections Victoria, re the Williams’ murder. Apart from para
118, quoted above, aka Overland’s last straw, in which he only mentions the
two non-police agencies, there is para 61 (Fryer’s briefing to police media
boss McKechnie), which other than mentioning mysterious “other matters”, also emphasizes the Department of Justice and Corrections Victoria, and not Victoria
Police. Even the 7 May Age article
itself, although inevitably muddied by the breaking news about Jones being
marched out the door being interwoven into the same story, has at its core
this:

“It is understood Sir Ken and several other
senior police and government officials held concerns about the decision by
Justice Department officials, including department secretary Penny Armytage, to
approve the moving of Williams from isolation at Barwon Prison to the
maximum-security Acacia unit.

The decision to place Williams in Acacia
raised serious questions about the quality of assessments done by Corrections
Victoria and department officials reporting to Ms Armytage on the risk to the
drug dealer’s life. Police should have also been aware of the potential threats
to Williams posed by other Acacia inmates.

The Saturday Age understands authorities
have discovered an email sent from Ms Armytage’s office approving his
relocation to Acacia.

…

An investigation by The Saturday Age into
the bungling of the moving of Carl Williams inside Barwon Prison has detailed:

■His relocation to a unit occupied by
violent underworld figures, including one with close ties to a corrupt
ex-detective connected to the murder of the Hodsons.

■The failure to find and act on easily
obtainable information inside the prison that suggested Williams’ life could be
at risk.

■The failure to move Williams back to
isolation when rumours and media articles suggesting he was a police informer
swept through the prison, including shortly before his death.

■The allowing of prisoners to store in
their cells highly sensitive police documents containing information that put
Williams’ life at risk.”

What journo McKenzie doesn’t say in this
story (but apparently knew at the time: para 55) is that the “authorities” who
were then in possession of the above email either consisted of, or included,
Sir Ken Jones.

In the end, the latest Ombudsman’s report
has no choice but to dance around this awkward bulge in the pants of the facts. Faced with a legitimate ask, you might think
– either sidling up to Sir Ken Jones or Penny Armytage – George Brouwer
conspicuously chooses to partner neither.

Update
26 June 2012

Penny Armytage has
indicated her resignation from the Department of
Justice. Alas, her next career move is
not to a proverbial cave on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, but to a
proverbial fortified mansion in Abbottabad, aka accounting and consulting firm
KPMG.

Her timing is interesting as, apart from
the Carl Williams’ murder controversy, things were actually looking up for Ms Armytage, with her having sent a mass email to Department of Justicestaff, detailing 480 job cuts in the department and
related agencies at 7.53pm on Friday 22 June. While other CEOs might squirm at
implementing such sweeping redundancies, Ms Armytage
appears to be something of an expert at downsizing.Her apparent track record re Victoria’s
witness-protection program makes even “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap look like a
wimp.No doubt KPMG is interested in
exploring the private-sector possibilities of extreme downsizing, Armytage-style.

As for the future of
current or pending inquiries regarding her public-sector decision-making, you might say at this stage, that Justice has been done.

* "OPI
concedes failure against force's culture", John Ferguson, Australian June 21, 2012 12:00am, i.e. about 10 hours before it was officially tabled.

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